Boarding the M Train

My apologies to any readers for the disruption of my regularly scheduled blog update. I was quite indisposed this weekend, and actually feeling positively malarial.

Ha. Haha. Hm.

My previously sympathetic-but-cavalier attitude towards boarding the M Train shifted when a six-legged bloodthirsty someone bought me a ticket. Despite almost-continuous use of my bed net (and always when there is question of the mosquito-proofing of the room, like mine at the compound), religious and timely consumption of my antimalarials, and confident pumping of every immuno-booster known to man into my system, what some of my fellow JFs considered inevitable for me finally occurred, and I promptly got malaria. Indeed, they're probably shocked it happened so late in the game. It crept upon my liver like a well-executed poisoning. It was ingenius in its subtlety. It happened like this:

Monday July 7th: Feeling ill; went for a blood smear to see if I had filled the vacancy in my liver. Test was negative for malaria. I went home, took a nap, and felt okay. Tricky, tricky.

Friday, July 18th, 1am: I wake up to what I feel could only be someone boring through my abdomen with the thing that built the Chunnel. I take an immodium, hoping the gas relief will kick in. I toss, turn, put my rear in the air, and do all manner of other embarrassing things in an attempt to help stem the pain. For my hubris, it increases.

Friday, July 18th, 3am: Vomiting begins. Despite it being seemingly impossible, pain increases. I give up trying to find a position to sleep in, and concentrate on not crying.

Friday, July 18th, 4am: I run out of things to vomit. Curiously, vomiting does not cease. Small unintentional groans and moaning start to emit from what I can only assume is my throat. All my attention is focused on trying to get the sun to come up so I can go to the hospital and have someone knock me out.

Friday, July 18th, 4:30am: The thought angrily occurs: "What the @!&% did I eat?!"

Friday, July 18th, 5:15am: I hear noises outside, and stumble out of my room. Doris is fetching water. I ask her when the hospital opens. She tells me the hour: 8am.

Friday, July 18th, 5:17am: My eyes cross, and I fall over in pain and hopelessness.
Soon after collecting me from the floor, Doris tells me there is emergency care open all night that could take me right that instant. I restrain my urge to suffocate myself for my inadvertant stupidity.

Friday, July 18th, 5:30am: I lurch to the hospital with Doris in tow. I stop three times to vomit. In lieu of stomach acid or food, I expel the ninja-turtle green fluid that holds the bubbles in a carpentry level. I absentmindedly wonder where I've been keeping that stuff in my body, and why suddenly it's in my stomach.

Friday, July 18th, 6am: The blood smear they took from my finger comes back positive for malaria. They march me to the men's ward. They yank down my Snoopy pyjama pants, exposing my cave-tanned white rear to 12 emaciated and previously bored Ghanaian village men, and stick me with an injection that is supposed to stem my vomiting. For their efforts, I vomit in the sink. For 10 minutes.

Friday, July 18th, 6:15am: An American doctor that runs the hospital happens to wander into the mens ward and decides that having a frail-looking white girl this wretched in public simply wont do. He sends me down the path to his house, where I collapse on the couch.
I have a faint recollection of my father calling me and me telling him that I'm okay. I also remember limeade.

Monday, July 21st, 11am: I wake up, and discover that I've been taking a three-day course of antimalarials, writing short nonsensical entries in my daily journal on looseleaf in unintelligible handwriting, and expelling a lot of liquids. I stand, and despite some difficulty, can actually keep my equilibrium.
I write a thank-you note to the doctor's family and walk hazily back to the compound.

As I write this, I'm only recently sure I am in the clear--malaria tends to relapse if not eradicated completely by its host, and I had to go back for another blood smear to see if the steady stream of toxins in my body got all the little bastards. Complications also might be a problem; we're not really sure at this point why I'm still so sore in the right half of my abdomen. I'll be proceeding with caution, thats for sure. It was a bad time for this to happen (is there a good time for malaria?), but considering the number of times a -year- people in Ghana tend to get malaria, I guess it's almost a necessary part of the experience. I guess.

Not that I'd reccommend it to anyone.